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Trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transporting, providing or obtaining, by any means, any person for labor or services involving forced labor, slavery or servitude in any industry, such as forced or coerced participation in agriculture, prostitution, manufacturing, or other industries or in domestic service or marriage.

This illicit trade in persons is a multimillion-dollar, criminally organized global industry. Traffickers use deception, force or coercion to move people into situations in which they are vulnerable and easily held in conditions of forced labor and slavery. Trafficked persons are often treated as criminals, rather than as victims of crime, while traffickers escape prosecution. Those who try to escape or seek help risk retaliation from traffickers. Although victims of traffickers can be of either gender, an overwhelming majority of the victims are women and children. Gender discrimination, poverty, war and/or abuse drive millions of men, women and children to migrate for work, marriage or to escape untenable situations. It is estimated that every year several million people are trafficked within and out of Asia and the states of the former Soviet Union alone.

The United States government estimates that at least 20,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year for forced labor in domestic work, prostitution, agriculture and factories. Human rights groups and other organizations are engaging in the struggle to bring a human rights perspective to human trafficking and to provide services to trafficked persons and, while governments are increasing addressing the problem, the majority take no action or, worse, condone, tolerate or participate in this trade in human lives.